This mod is the release of a mod developed by me initially for the Legendary Edition, now available here also for the Special Edition and Anniversary Edition versions of Skyrim. The .esp is converted to Form 44 format, and all the .NIFs (meshes) and .DDSs (textures) are optimized in the correct ways to run in both SE and AE, requiring absolutely no further work on your part.
When possible, my releases to SE and AE are flagged as .ESLs, which means they don't take up an .ESP slot in the users load order. However, this is not always possible. Below, you can check the three possible scenarios and check which scenario applies to this specific release. Since the other two will be crossed out, and the correct one will be marked in yellow:
The mod is flagged as .ESL, so it won't take up space in your load order, and yet it will be read and executed perfectly by your game;
The mod is not flagged as .ESL, just like a normal .ESP, because it has FaceGen data on it, so if it was flagged, whoever is not using the last official updates for SE or AE, including most pirated Skyrim users, will have the NPCs added by this mod having the gray face bug. However, if you have the latest update installed, you can flag this mod as an .ESL using SSEEdit, at your own risk, but generally with no problems;
The mod is not flagged as .ESL, just like a normal .ESP, as it requires the use of .SEQ files. In all the tests I did, even regenerating the .SEQ files after flagging the .ESPs as .ESLs, the dialogues stopped working. So, to maintain the integrity of dialogues and even quests added by my mods with .SEQ files, you should not attempt to flag this file under any circumstances, and you should use it in the exact way I made it available for download.
One last comment: there is a common misconception that all LE meshes need to go through NifOptimizer in order to be used in SE or AE, with the most varied arguments defending this, and a few absurdities about what would happen if it wasn't done. This is just another one of the myths that this community believes without any basis, and that it spreads only because it saw many people repeating the same thing. DO NOT OPTIMIZE meshes, neither mine nor any from other mod's. Most meshes are ready to run directly from LE to SE. NifOptimizer should only be used in cases where they DO NOT WORK DIRECTLY WITHOUT BEING OPTIMIZED. Using NifOptimizer indiscriminately without need, and without knowing how to do it correctly, leads to terrible consequences, being able to damage UV's, Normal Maps, the very 3d structure of the models, and much more, in short, causing more problems than the possible problems you could have with 1 in every 100 meshes needing to be optimized, something you would later do manually and individually when proven necessary. JUST DON'T PASS MESHES THROUGH THE NIF OPTIMIZER EXCEPT IF THEY JUST DON'T WORK IN THE SPECIAL EDITION OR ANNIVERSARY EDITION AFTER YOU TESTED THEM YOURSELF FIRST.
It's a fact that yes NifOptimizer can solve problems in problematic Nifs, but in this case, and if these Nifs are mine, just contact me and I'll solve the problem for you. If you have really in-depth knowledge of how to correct any negative consequences of using the program on the problematic mesh, that's ok, do it, but if not, just contact me and I'll solve it, since the nif having the problem would be caused by a little oversight of mine while I was producing it, so would be my responsability to fix the problem as well.Unfortunately, because the use of NifOptimizer was recommended in many tutorials as a possible step, a lot of people took it as mandatory, and many fools started to use it as gospel and to convince others, but remember, it's not because it's on the internet that is real. There is absolutely NO such thing as an "old nif format". NiTriShape works perfectly in SE and AE, it is NOT necessary in any way to convert the .nifs to BSTriShape format for them to run smoothly in game, and this messy conversion can even lead you to severe ingame problems. Unfortunately, 3 or 4 paranoids managed to create a legion of players who live in constant panic of corrupting their games, and in an attempt to avoid it, they end up diving into a corruption many times greater, created by themselves, unnecessarily.But don't just take my word for it based on my years of experience and dedication to this activity, listen to Arcane University's own words about it, possibly the best center of studies on modding for The Elder Scrolls available on the internet: (image extracted from the link: https://wiki.beyondskyrim.org/wiki/Arcane_University:NIF_Data_Format)
Play more, have more fun, and let the authors be responsible for the technical condition and functionality of the mods they release. And if you don't trust them enough to use mods without trying to fix what often doesn't need to be fixed, just stop using those mods.
Take care, and if you have any doubts, look for me on my Discord server, Mihail
Hello Mihail, terrific work! Hope you are doing well these days. Thank you =)
Would it be possible to either: (a) Fix the sentinels bugs, like the jerky spastic animations, and the "shaky blurry" screen effect sticking to character after they die, and death ragdolling (or lack thereof) or (b) Offer a patch that removes the sentinels, and leaves in all the other automatons?
Kind Regards, \m/
Also the hitbox seems weird, you shoot it center mass to the head sensor cluster, and it registers as a miss... tho' that might be the animation glitching, I don't know. But I've killed two in Mzulft, and after they die, it has a persistent lightning bolt and EMP effect, with fullscreen pulsing and blurring that persists even if I walk about 100 meters away from the corpse. (screenshot below)
The mentioned effects don't happen to me on a vanilla playlist, friend, and i can hit them perfectly, all works fine and as expected. I can't fix "bugs" that i can't see or reproduce on my end, I never had a single problem with them, except the rare ocasion when they project a last attack when they die, and takes some seconds to vanish, but its like 1 time on each 50 encounters, and it's Skyrim so it's expected, like flying Mammoths from time to time. XD Regarding ragdoll animations after death, this specific set of animations has none, that's why they become static when killed, perhaps I will make them turn into ashpiles in a future update, despite I seeing no much issue on them becoming kinda static when destroyed, since they are machines. Still regarding your problem with hitbox, are you using mods such as Precision? This one causes hitbox problems on custom creatures, due to how it works on the vanilla enemies.
But, since i believe images (or videos) speak louder than words, i recorded a video of me fighting a sentinel. As you can see on the video bellow, i can hit them perfectly on the head with bow and arrow (inicially i tried ice spike, but then I remembered they are immune to it), so the collisions work perfectly and if yours do not it is because some mod in your load order is causing it probably, have in mind you also may miss some hits because how fast they are, but if you hit the head you cause damage, there is no excuse around it on vanilla, as you can see on the video everytime my arrow connects with the head, they take damage. Then, you can also see the animations working exactly as they should, no bugs at all, same to the attacks, and on death they produce no blurring effect as I also mentioned before. All is working as it should on my end, on a vanilla or close to vanilla playlist, so, the original game as planned and released by Bethesda. Only thing really present as you mentioned is the non- ragdoll after death, but i dont think it looks that bad the way it is, due to sentinels being metal machines.
Check the video bellow:
As i said, I am here to listen to feedback and fix possible issues, and improve my mods as much as I can, but on this case I really have no problems with them at all on a vanilla playlist. If other mods are messing up with what the sentinels should be, this goes beyond what I can do to improve your experience with them.
OBS- made this post sticky, in case more people want to check the video and my explanation, and the possible causes to issues with the sentinels.
Love your Dwemer machines! Extraordinary work. My question is how they are implemented in the dwemer dungeons. There is a mod Legends of etherium and in the main hall is much space for the big ones. But its realtivly empty...
they are implemented accordingly to their stats, rarity and areas, friend. you will find spinners, defenders, etc, in most dungeons, while drillers for example are restricted to a submerged one, and dwarven colossus appear only as bosses on a few larger areas, etc.
Hi, thankyou for this awesome mod. So I am getting the same problem which is the sentinels spewing thunderbolts after killing them and it stays on like that. I use ordinator and Elemental Destruction Magic Redux. So any of them might be the issue?
Hello Mihail, thank you for your incredible work. I use almost all your creature mods and it makes Skyrim a fun place to return to.
To maybe spare anyone else a headache: I also encounter occasional sentinels that continuously shoot electricity after death. The only magic mod I use is Apocalypse magic. Moving Dwarven Automatons down to load after Apocalypse fixed this issue for me, so far. Try moving this mod below any magic mods you may have.
I lowered this mod beneath all my magic mods and it seems to have fixed things for me as well, but it could just be a big coincidence since the continuous lightning didn't happen every time a Sentinel was killed. It was always seemingly random for me. Either way, it does seem like that fixes it (at least, through my limited testing), though I have no idea why that would even be a conflict to begin with. Oh well, as long as it works!
sigh. Hate to be "that guy" but . . . I gotta ask. Safe to uninstall? Or maybe edit the sentinels out? They're really bugging out my game. At first I got the constant lightning flashing after killing one. No worries, I just read the sticky and moved it beneath Apocalypse and problem was solved. Then later on I got killed by one and I got turned to a pile of ash! That has NEVER happened to me in all my years of playing. Got a black screen that I had to hard shutdown my computer. Happened again, same black screen result. I had ZERO crashes before this and I'm 32 levels in and I really, REALLY don't wanna start over. Thanks.
EDIT: For anybody having this issue the "Spawn Remover" mod does the trick. I just removed the sentinels in XEdit. Works like a charm. The rest of the beasties in this mod are still in and everything's solid. Just don't be afraid of Xedit. It's your friend. ;)
Wow man, you truly are the chief of this stuff. Not only that you constantly make the game richer for us with your amazing mods, but what you add. How these fit the game so well and the quality...thx heaps again and chapeau! You are truly the beast master of Skyrim! Just saw the sentinel in game and heck, i love it^^ Can't wait see the rest soon!
I did a Dwemer Dragonborn gameplay and I love the NPCs from this mod
I’m going to upload the .esp (with depedency of this mod) creating spell and tomes of this automatons as summonable
I just changed the trait from not summonable to summonable, and, of course, created the magic effects, spells and books, inclusing the original NPCs names
Yours ideas and works here are my favorite from all Nexus 🫶🏻
might sound a bit rude but is there a "lighter" version of this mod? Nearly a gig is pretty crazy, not in a bad way either, I'm just surprised that it's more weighty than the ones I saw on Beth.
I wish the sentinel's "eyes" turned off when they died, TBH I feel like many other people I probably have something that has an incompatibility with them because of textures/lightning/reflection (or ENB) mods the sentinels flood the rooms with red light xD to the point where when near them everything ends up red xD (especially everything with reflective textures like metal and we have a lot of these in dwarven ruins, heck even my stone texture is a bit "wet" and shines bright red xD)
I should be less lazy and check where the issue is but i'm just going to edit the plugging and prevent them from spawning I guess xD
regarding the weird lights maybe a mod incombatibility yes, some ENBs have really weird effects regarding interaction with lights, glowing, etc. regarding the eyes turning off when killed, great idea, i actuallt already did it with the dwarven spinners.
I have been using this mod for a long time without problems, and it's amazing. Recently, I redid my modlist, and I only realized when encountering the sentinel and magetta, that I had some issues with the textures caused by something in my modlist. The claws on both creatures and parts of the head of the magetta are turquoise. I have tried reinstalling the mod and making sure it overrides any conflicts, as well as disabling the shaders I'm using, but no change. Any ideas what could be causing this and how to correct?
Love the creature mods - adds so much to the game!
203 comments
The mod is not flagged as .ESL, just like a normal .ESP, because it has FaceGen data on it, so if it was flagged, whoever is not using the last official updates for SE or AE, including most pirated Skyrim users, will have the NPCs added by this mod having the gray face bug. However, if you have the latest update installed, you can flag this mod as an .ESL using SSEEdit, at your own risk, but generally with no problems;The mod is not flagged as .ESL, just like a normal .ESP, as it requires the use of .SEQ files. In all the tests I did, even regenerating the .SEQ files after flagging the .ESPs as .ESLs, the dialogues stopped working. So, to maintain the integrity of dialogues and even quests added by my mods with .SEQ files, you should not attempt to flag this file under any circumstances, and you should use it in the exact way I made it available for download.JUST DON'T PASS MESHES THROUGH THE NIF OPTIMIZER EXCEPT IF THEY JUST DON'T WORK IN THE SPECIAL EDITION OR ANNIVERSARY EDITION AFTER YOU TESTED THEM YOURSELF FIRST.
It's a fact that yes NifOptimizer can solve problems in problematic Nifs, but in this case, and if these Nifs are mine, just contact me and I'll solve the problem for you. If you have really in-depth knowledge of how to correct any negative consequences of using the program on the problematic mesh, that's ok, do it, but if not, just contact me and I'll solve it, since the nif having the problem would be caused by a little oversight of mine while I was producing it, so would be my responsability to fix the problem as well.Unfortunately, because the use of NifOptimizer was recommended in many tutorials as a possible step, a lot of people took it as mandatory, and many fools started to use it as gospel and to convince others, but remember, it's not because it's on the internet that is real. There is absolutely NO such thing as an "old nif format". NiTriShape works perfectly in SE and AE, it is NOT necessary in any way to convert the .nifs to BSTriShape format for them to run smoothly in game, and this messy conversion can even lead you to severe ingame problems. Unfortunately, 3 or 4 paranoids managed to create a legion of players who live in constant panic of corrupting their games, and in an attempt to avoid it, they end up diving into a corruption many times greater, created by themselves, unnecessarily.But don't just take my word for it based on my years of experience and dedication to this activity, listen to Arcane University's own words about it, possibly the best center of studies on modding for The Elder Scrolls available on the internet: (image extracted from the link: https://wiki.beyondskyrim.org/wiki/Arcane_University:NIF_Data_Format)
Play more, have more fun, and let the authors be responsible for the technical condition and functionality of the mods they release. And if you don't trust them enough to use mods without trying to fix what often doesn't need to be fixed, just stop using those mods.
Take care, and if you have any doubts,
look for me on my Discord server,
Mihail
I was wondering if there is a bundle of these, but in individual ESPs. I would like to not use the Dwarven Sentinel. They're very buggy
Would it be possible to either:
(a) Fix the sentinels bugs, like the jerky spastic animations, and the "shaky blurry" screen effect sticking to character after they die, and death ragdolling (or lack thereof)
or
(b) Offer a patch that removes the sentinels, and leaves in all the other automatons?
Kind Regards, \m/
Also the hitbox seems weird, you shoot it center mass to the head sensor cluster, and it registers as a miss... tho' that might be the animation glitching, I don't know. But I've killed two in Mzulft, and after they die, it has a persistent lightning bolt and EMP effect, with fullscreen pulsing and blurring that persists even if I walk about 100 meters away from the corpse. (screenshot below)
I can't fix "bugs" that i can't see or reproduce on my end, I never had a single problem with them, except the rare ocasion when they project a last attack when they die, and takes some seconds to vanish, but its like 1 time on each 50 encounters, and it's Skyrim so it's expected, like flying Mammoths from time to time. XD
Regarding ragdoll animations after death, this specific set of animations has none, that's why they become static when killed, perhaps I will make them turn into ashpiles in a future update, despite I seeing no much issue on them becoming kinda static when destroyed, since they are machines.
Still regarding your problem with hitbox, are you using mods such as Precision? This one causes hitbox problems on custom creatures, due to how it works on the vanilla enemies.
But, since i believe images (or videos) speak louder than words, i recorded a video of me fighting a sentinel.
As you can see on the video bellow, i can hit them perfectly on the head with bow and arrow (inicially i tried ice spike, but then I remembered they are immune to it), so the collisions work perfectly and if yours do not it is because some mod in your load order is causing it probably, have in mind you also may miss some hits because how fast they are, but if you hit the head you cause damage, there is no excuse around it on vanilla, as you can see on the video everytime my arrow connects with the head, they take damage. Then, you can also see the animations working exactly as they should, no bugs at all, same to the attacks, and on death they produce no blurring effect as I also mentioned before. All is working as it should on my end, on a vanilla or close to vanilla playlist, so, the original game as planned and released by Bethesda. Only thing really present as you mentioned is the non- ragdoll after death, but i dont think it looks that bad the way it is, due to sentinels being metal machines.
Check the video bellow:
As i said, I am here to listen to feedback and fix possible issues, and improve my mods as much as I can, but on this case I really have no problems with them at all on a vanilla playlist. If other mods are messing up with what the sentinels should be, this goes beyond what I can do to improve your experience with them.
OBS- made this post sticky, in case more people want to check the video and my explanation, and the possible causes to issues with the sentinels.
Love your Dwemer machines! Extraordinary work. My question is how they are implemented in the dwemer dungeons.
There is a mod Legends of etherium and in the main hall is much space for the big ones.
But its realtivly empty...
Regards
Gerri
you will find spinners, defenders, etc, in most dungeons, while drillers for example are restricted to a submerged one, and dwarven colossus appear only as bosses on a few larger areas, etc.
To maybe spare anyone else a headache:
I also encounter occasional sentinels that continuously shoot electricity after death. The only magic mod I use is Apocalypse magic. Moving Dwarven Automatons down to load after Apocalypse fixed this issue for me, so far. Try moving this mod below any magic mods you may have.
They're really bugging out my game. At first I got the constant lightning flashing after killing one. No worries, I just read the sticky and moved it beneath Apocalypse and problem was solved. Then later on I got killed by one and I got turned to a pile of ash! That has NEVER happened to me in all my years of playing. Got a black screen that I had to hard shutdown my computer. Happened again, same black screen result. I had ZERO crashes before this and I'm 32 levels in and I really, REALLY don't wanna start over. Thanks.
EDIT: For anybody having this issue the "Spawn Remover" mod does the trick. I just removed the sentinels in XEdit. Works like a charm. The rest of the beasties in this mod are still in and everything's solid. Just don't be afraid of Xedit. It's your friend. ;)
Just saw the sentinel in game and heck, i love it^^ Can't wait see the rest soon!
I’m going to upload the .esp (with depedency of this mod) creating spell and tomes of this automatons as summonable
I just changed the trait from not summonable to summonable, and, of course, created the magic effects, spells and books, inclusing the original NPCs names
Yours ideas and works here are my favorite from all Nexus 🫶🏻
I should be less lazy and check where the issue is but i'm just going to edit the plugging and prevent them from spawning I guess xD
regarding the eyes turning off when killed, great idea, i actuallt already did it with the dwarven spinners.
Love the creature mods - adds so much to the game!
i guess was error during installation, try again, maybe manually.